hard to say because I took classes for a year in school before I came over. That was good enough to get me to where daily life was alright. My kanji is still pretty poor, though, I mask it by being a good speaker and a white male. My wife is Asian-Canadian and her Japanese is a lot more scrutinized while I string together a 60% grammatically correct sentence and people burst into applausethe weather outside is literally a frowny face with x-ed out eyes. Four people died...

i hear ya, fat, hairy, and married, though. Had eye surgery and then got hurt playing basketball, lost 5kg from standing around doing nothing, now first day back at the gym in ~half a year~ is killing me.